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Friday, April 15, 2016

Yelp? Boast? Cry Out?

There’s a bit of an on-going joke in my office – one that
I’m the brunt of.It’s well known that
my love of alliteration and all things Thesaurus
means I like to know the definition and meaning of words.There’s a particular person at work who loves to throw in the occasional not-so–run-of-the-mill
word knowing darn well I’ll be hitting Dictionary.com
to verify the meaning.This on-going
joke is so well known that other members of the company will provide the
definition for me if they feel I have not responded quickly enough.The phrase “who needs enemies” comes to
mind…..

Knowing my penchant for learning new words (or ensuring I
know what the word means), it was with some surprise that I learned a new
meaning for “yelp”. My rudimentary belief was that it meant “to
cry out” or “to call out sharply” and we often use it in reference to pain such
as “The dog yelped when its owner stepped on its foot”. Tonight I found out that Yelp dates back to
Old and Middle English where it meant “to boast”. Why, you may be wondering, would I look this
up? Well, like many people, when
travelling I use the website Yelp.com
to find highly rated local restaurants and other establishments because of the
comments made by people like me. You
know the ones that “boast” about how great the food or service was? I was
curious….

I was particularly curious after reading an article in the
Washington Post “What
Yelp can tell you about a hospital that official ratings can’t” – I mean
who goes to Yelp to determine what hospital to go
to? Apparently now we should all
consider it! Researchers
from the University of Pennsylvania looked at 17,000 Yelp reviews
from consumers and found that the information left by consumers provided a far
broader overview of the hospitals then the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment
of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey) scores that are considered the
industry standard for evaluating communication and responsiveness of healthcare
providers, the cleanliness and quietness of the hospital environment, and pain
management.

The study found that while the information included on Yelp
only covered about 60% of the content HCAHPS scores cover. It was also found
that Yelp covered 12 different areas not included in the HCAHPS analysis such
as the cost of the visit, insurance and billing, ancillary testing, facilities,
amenities, scheduling, compassion of staff, family member care, quality of
nursing, quality of staff, quality of technical aspects of care, and specific
type of medical care. The Yelp reviews
focused more on the soft skills or interpersonal relationships such as how
caring or comforting the healthcare workers were.

The testimonials on social media sites are organic and often
reveal exactly what the problem or positive occurrence was that affected the
patient’s or family member’s experience.
For a CEO looking to make improvements on the perception of their
facility, online consumer review platforms such as Yelp may be the place to
turn to in order to supplement information provided by HCAHPS. I’m quick to Tweet about positive and
negative experiences I’ve had with various service establishments, and so now I
guess I’ll have to remember to use Yelp as another platform to share my
thoughts and comments on!